By now readers of this blog have heard about worker centers and the worker center called Fight for $15 whose mission is to establish a $15 minimum wage for fast food workers. Anecdotally, the Fight for $15 leader (who is the subject of this post) said that $15 was chosen as their preferred minimum wage…

President Trump’s budget slashed the Department of Labor’s funding from $12.2 billion this year to $9.6 billion next year. This equals a 21% cut. On the chopping block is the DOL’s Susan Harwood Training Grant Program. You don’t know what the Susan Harwood Grant is? I didn’t either. The Susan Harwood grant gives out grants…

I first covered the budding Worker Center movement here. The takeaway from that blog post was: But worker centers are not “labor organizations” – they are 501(c)(3) charities – so they are not regulated as heavily as unions nor do they pay taxes. Worker centers cannot engage in unfair labor practices and do not have…

Since 1980 real wages in retail have fallen by 11% while on-call scheduling, involuntary part-time work, and “clopening” (where workers lock up the store at night and reopen the next morning) have, according to unions, wreaked havoc with workers’ lives. But the retail sector has one of the lowest rates of unionization in the economy…

This case illustrates how worker centers and labor unions work closely together when trying to organize a company. The UFCW, which has unsuccessfully tried to organize Walmart for years, utilized its worker center OUR Walmart to allege that Walmart committed unfair labor practices when it fired two employees after they participated in demonstrations led by…

Jose Oliva, a director for the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, a prominent worker center, recently explained how worker centers are nonprofit groups that are an alternate form of labor organizing. Most major unions have established and funded their own worker centers to further their own causes. According to Oliva, a union can collect dues from…